I woke to the sound of drums

by Mike McInnis

There's something nerve-wracking about putting this magazine together issue after issue. I never know until the last minute how any particular topic is going to turn out. There are themes that I think are killer that inspire very little writing from the staff, and other themes that I think are average that turn out to be extremely popular topics.

Syd Barrett was the topic for issue #7 of Spare Bricks back in winter 2001. Fall 2002 brought the Roger Waters issue (#13), and issue #18 (winter 2004) was devoted to David Gilmour. Poor old Dave. His issue was so thin that I was somewhat embarrassed to publish it. Despite the huge impact he has made on Floydian history, the staff just didn't find much to say about him.

At the time, the staff was divided into three camps: those who wanted to lump Nick Mason and Rick Wright into a single issue, those who wanted to do separate issues on each of them, and me. I figured that if we couldn't fill up an issue about David Gilmour of all people, we wouldn't have anything to say about Nick or Rick at all.

Boy, was I ever wrong.

This issue covers nearly aspect of Nick Mason's work: his drumming with the Floyd, his work as a producer and drummer outside the Floyd, his automobile hobby, his writing, and so on. And the most exciting part is that with this issue, Nick Mason has become the first member of Pink Floyd to give Spare Bricks an exclusive interview. Many kudos go to staff Christopher Hughes for taking this initiative to arrange and conduct this interview. I'm sure you will all enjoy it; I know I did.

(And before I am inundated with requests for back issues, no, they aren't available online. We are working on making them available, but they aren't ready yet. Sorry. Believe me, we will promote it heavily when the Spare Bricks Archive is open to the public.)

Mike McInnis is the editor of Spare Bricks.